Torture

EXCLUSIVE: CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy
ABC News Finds the Location of a "Black Site" for Alleged Terrorists in Lithuania
By Brian Ross and Matthew Cole | ABC News

The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.

Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time. A full report on the can be seen on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson tonight.

"The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."

Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the "black site" in 2004. Read more.

Or whatever's left of it.

Iraqis level allegations of abuse, rape at UK troops after pullout
British defense ministry says charges being investigated
By Paisley Dodds, Associated Press | Daily Star

raqi civilians who were detained by British troops during the US-led war have leveled some 33 allegations of rape and abuse against male and female soldiers, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Saturday.

The allegations come in the wake of the British withdrawal from Iraq this year. One man says he was raped by two British soldiers while another claims he was sexually humiliated by both male and female personnel. Others allege they were stripped naked and photographed in the same style as the notorious pictures at Abu Ghraib, where abuses of prisoners by US troops helped fuel anti-American sentiment.

British soldiers have faced a series of claims that they mistreated Iraqi civilians in southern Iraq during six years of combat operations. Last year, Britain settled a legal case involving the death of one Iraqi civilian, and the abuse of nine others, paying out nearly $5 million in compensation.

A public inquiry is still under way into the death of hotel worker Baha Mousa. He died in the custody of British troops following a raid on his hotel in the southern Iraq city of Basra in 2003 and suffered 93 separate injuries. Read more.

By David Swanson

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate "mainstream" media make quite a pair. We're hearing a very "balanced" debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We're not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime. We're not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the "war on terror" might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis. What effect might that have had on Americans' willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren't hearing about that.

By Dave Lindorff

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of strength.”

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian style control over information.

Dozens of Gitmo detainees finally get day in court
By Pete Yost, AP | Yahoo! News

In courtrooms barred to the public, dozens of terror suspects are pleading for their freedom from the Guantanamo Bay prison, sometimes even testifying on their own behalf by video from the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Complying with a Supreme Court ruling last year, 15 federal judges in the U.S. courthouse here are giving detainees their day in court after years behind bars half a world away from their homelands.

The judges have found the government's evidence against 30 detainees wanting and ordered their release. That number could rise significantly because the judges are on track to hear challenges from dozens more prisoners.

Scooped up along with hard-core terrorist suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, these 30 detainees stand in stark contrast to the 10 prisoners whom the Obama administration targeted for prosecution Friday for plotting the Sept. 11 and other terrorist attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of 9/11, and four of his alleged henchmen are headed for a federal civilian trial in New York; five others, including a top suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, will be tried by a military commission.

More detainees are expected to soon be added to the prosecution list. But there will still be plenty of cases left among the 215 detainees now at Guantanamo to keep the judges here busy as they work to clear a legal morass the Bush administration created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bush administration Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once promised Guantanamo held "the worst of the worst." The judges here have rejected pleas for release from eight detainees, but they have concluded the government doesn't even have enough evidence to keep 30 other detainees behind bars. Read more.

Secretary Of Defense Says Americans Should Not See Torture Photos | Press Release
ACLU Says Actions Stifle Transparency and Accountability | ACLU

WASHINGTON – In a brief filed late Friday night, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates invoked his authority to block the release of photos depicting the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody overseas. The photos are the subject of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking their release. Secretary Gates was granted the authority to exempt certain images from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as part of a new law signed by President Obama last month.

“We are disappointed that Secretary Gates has invoked new legislation to keep the torture photos secret,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “These photos are an important part of the historical record and they are crucial to the ongoing debate about accountability. In withholding the photos, Secretary Gates has cited national security concerns, but no democracy has ever been made stronger by suppressing information about its own misconduct."

Huge rise in birth defects in Falluja
Iraqi former battle zone sees abnormal clusters of infant tumours and deformities
Martin Chulov | Guardian.co.UK

Link to video: The Babies of Falluja

Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.

The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months as specialists working in Falluja's over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.

Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems - are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.

A group of Iraqi and British officials, including the former Iraqi minister for women's affairs, Dr Nawal Majeed a-Sammarai, and the British doctors David Halpin and Chris Burns-Cox, have petitioned the UN general assembly to ask that an independent committee fully investigate the defects and help clean up toxic materials left over decades of war – including the six years since Saddam Hussein was ousted. Read more.

Yoo's lawyers warn of flood of political suits
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer | SF Chronicle

A ruling that allowed a prisoner to sue former Bush administration attorney John Yoo for devising the legal theories that justified his alleged torture threatens to "open the floodgates to politically motivated lawsuits" against government officials, Yoo's lawyers say.

In papers filed late Monday with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Yoo's new team of private lawyers argued that a judge's refusal to dismiss a suit by inmate Jose Padilla injected the courts into the political arena.

"Threatening executive branch lawyers with personal liability for reaching allegedly incorrect legal conclusions regarding the constitutionality of a president's wartime actions would infringe on the core war-making authority that the Constitution reserves to the political branches," said attorney Miguel Estrada. Read more.

The Washington State Religious Campaign Against Torture, after scheduling Ray McGovern for a series of talks in the Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia area, suggested he write an op-ed highlighting the torture issue in advance of his presentations (Nov. 12-16). The Seattle Times, the city's sole surviving daily newspaper, has turned down Ray's draft. We reproduce it below—largely for afterdowningstreet.org readers in the the Seattle area, who might not otherwise know that Ray will be in the neighborhood.

By Ray McGovern, AfterDowningStreet

“We’re going to talk about the policy of torture,” is what the radio producer said when she called me five years ago. “And you’ll have ten minutes to defend your side.”

“There’s another side?” I asked. “Of course,” she answered, and the other person will also have ten minutes.” My protest that torture is not a “policy,” but rather a crime, made no impact.

ACLU Lawsuit Charges American Citizen Illegally Detained And Mistreated By U.S. Officials | Press Release
New Jersey Man Held For Four Months Overseas And Threatened With Torture And Disappearance

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit on behalf of a New Jersey man who was illegally detained and mistreated by U.S. officials in Kenya and Ethiopia. After fleeing hostilities in Somalia in 2006, Amir Meshal was arrested, secretly imprisoned in inhumane conditions and subjected to harsh interrogations by U.S. officials over 30 times in three different countries before ultimately being released four months later without charge.

Senate Votes Against Barring Funding For Federal Court Prosecutions Of 9/11 Cases | Press Release

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted to table, thus defeating, an amendment, S.A.2669, to the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act today which would have prohibited the use of Justice Department funds for the prosecution of detainees charged in connection with the September 11 attacks in Article III courts, the federal courts that have been used for nearly 200 international terrorism trials and convictions since 9/11. The amendment, introduced by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), would have forced the government to use the fatally flawed Guantánamo military commissions for detainees’ trials. On October 30, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Senate leaders opposing the Graham amendment.

Cynthia McKinney War Crimes Speech Part 1

Cynthia McKinney applauds Mohawk activist Splitting the Sky for his courageous effort in Calgary Canada to arrest George W. Bush for his criminal activities. Now, he faces 6 months in jail attempting to arrest Bush.

On Thursday, November 12, Alliance for Justice is holding a National Torture Accountability Day.

There are three ways your organization can get involved:

Take Action in Washington, DC:

On November 12th, the Federalist Society, an ultraconservative legal organization, is featuring John Yoo, one of the authors of the infamous “torture memos,” as a speaker at their annual convention at The Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC.

Alliance for Justice invites local activists to join us outside the Mayflower Hotel, as we hand out copies of the U.S. Constitution and ask that Attorney General Eric Holder authorize a full investigation of the Bush administration’s descent into torture.

In a landmark case, twenty-three Americans, mostly CIA operatives, have been convicted in Italy for kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003. They were all tried in absentia after the United States refused to hand them over. The convictions turn them into international fugitives who risk arrest abroad. The case marks the first time any American has been convicted for taking part in a so-called “extraordinary rendition.” We go to Rome to speak with the Italian prosecutor who brought the case, Armando Spataro, and get comment from international law and human rights attorney Scott Horton. [Includes rush transcript].

Justice Denied After Seven Years of Pain and Struggle
By Stephen Rohde | Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Imagine it’s September 2002 and you are at JFK Airport changing planes on your way home to Canada, after a vacation in Tunisia. To your surprise, you are detained by U.S. authorities and interrogated for…13 days. The Bush administration labels you a suspected member of Al Qaeda and sends you against your will to Syrian intelligence authorities renowned for torture. You are tortured, interrogated and detained in a tiny underground cell for nearly a year before the Syrian government releases you, stating they had found no connection to any criminal or terrorist organization or activity. An exhaustive investigation by the Canadian government finds you innocent of terrorism or other wrongdoing and that government apologizes for its minor role. Arar v. Ashcroft, No 06-4216-cv. Wouldn’t you expect American law to afford you due process and a judicial forum in which to hold those who committed these outrageous violations of your constitutional rights fully accountable?

That’s what Maher Arar, a 39-year old Canadian citizen, expected when he was subjected to these outrages. But as of this week, the doors of American justice have been slammed in Arar’s face.

On Monday, a sharply divided federal Court of Appeals, by a vote of 7 to 4, dismissed Arar’s case, concluding that it raised too many sensitive foreign policy and secrecy issues to permit any relief. Read more.

Cynthia Papermaster's report on John Yoo follows:

First, a report on our Yoo action yesterday and YouTube of the rousing song "Tell John Yoo That Torture is a Crime." Our next Yoo protest is Wednesday, Nov. 18, 3 p.m. at the law school.

I'm beginning to get to know this guy John Yoo. Today Toby Blome and I went into his civil procedure class as soon as it ended. Toby beat her beautiful drum and I called him out for enabling torture. Yoo packed up his briefcase and as he was leaving we kept asking him when he was going to resign from teaching at UC. And I said you ARE going to be prosecuted, Mr. Yoo. He said "have a nice day." Toby followed him down the hall and up the stairs and he said to her "I'll never resign."